🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <tecc2j4@zola.esd.sgi.com> rmr@sgi.com (Robert M. Reimann) writes:

>And as I've already said, plenty of other countries
>figured this [subsidizing art] out years ago.

I hate to burn the butane on this newsgroup; but you say this as
though the Europeans had just recently received a strip
telegram from Heaven, been drenched by some divine ejaculation
of wisdom and instantly converted their squalid pigsty in the
north corner of nowhere to Utopia Forever, maybe not quite
up to Paradise but certainly near the elevator.

Yes, European governments have been subsidizing art for years.
In fact, European governments have been subsidizing art since
before I was born; and, for that matter, since before you were
born.  Or your grandfather; or his.  

Perhaps it started in the Renaissance; but I doubt it.  When
they finally dig up Stonehenge I'll give you five to three they
find a grant number scratched into the foundations.
"Contributors include the Thag Fund, makers of fine trepanning
equipment since the reign of Chief Grog."

And when you're studying history, it's pretty easy to fall in
love with old art.  Because for most of time it's the only
history there was.  It's hard to look at a Michelangelo and say
old Florence was anything but the utter navel of civilization
circa 1400; it's hard to look at a society that spent all its
time killing animals and eating them as anything but a bunch of
squalid barbarians.  One starts to think, bingo, culture equals
civilization.  And such an idea being culture in itself, it
makes its way into the seventh-grade social-studies books; and
once planted there it is hard to uproot.

I used to believe it, myself.

But it's bullshit.  It's simple, arrant bullshit; and it's
dangerous bullshit, because it's so easy to believe.

The measure of a civilization is not the art it produces.  The
measure of a civilization is the happiness of its citizens.
The Sistine Chapel sure is nice to look at; but is it nice to
think about?  When you realize how many innocent people lived
and died in utter squalid poverty, conditions that would make a
Rio favela look like Scarsdale, to finance that kind of absurd
waste?  The men who paid Michelangelo were thieves - thieves on
a grand scale, thieves with pretensions, thieves with
organizations, even thieves with taste; but thieves all the
same.  They didn't grow the grain; and they didn't ship it.
They stole it.

If the Sistine ceiling were painted in human blood, would you
still pay a thousand lira to see it?

So - yes.  You're quite right. European governments have been
supporting art for millennia.  This is no new discovery.
They've toned down their game; but they still play by the same
rules, and what's foul in a bucket is foul in a drop.

c